Synergy: New Adult Romantic Suspense (U-District, #1) (12 page)

It was now or never. She grabbed the laptop bag and slipped out of the car.

Jade came around the corner.

She slowed to a brisk walk, looking down, careful not to attract Jade’s attention. As soon as she was in her car, she started breathing again.

She dialed her phone. “I got the laptop. Did you take care of the professor?”

“No, I’m on my way to do that now.”

IT WAS EASY TO GET
the professor’s home address from the purchase order Jade had set up to pay him. He took the Mercer Street exit off I-5. Once he located the professor’s house, he followed the GPS to the University of Washington.

A long winding stretch of road with water ditches and power poles was the perfect place to stage a car accident. The speed limit was thirty-five, but most cars were driving at least ten over. This was where he’d take care of the professor. Like with Arnie, only then it hadn’t been calculated. It’d been sheer opportunity.

“Here you go.” He’d returned to the deck of his boat and handed Arnie a beer. “Got a nibble yet?”

“I think so. I just felt a tug.”

He sat back and waited for the opportune moment, his heart pounding a mile a minute, the crescent wrench heavy in his back pocket under his shirt. What if Arnie fought back? They might both end up with wounds. Better not use the wrench. This needed to look like an accident.

“You all right? You don’t look so good,” Arnie said.

“It’s just hot, and you really surprised me telling me you wanted out.”

“Hey, no hard feelings, right? I’m just holding you to your word. You said we’d get out after a million.”

“You’re right. We should get out while the going’s good.”

Arnie’s fishing line bobbed a few times before going under. “I’ve got one,” Arnie said, excitement in his voice.

“Reel her in.” While Arnie was busy with the line, he checked for other boats in his binoculars.

“It’s a big one, and he’s fighting me hard. Hey—” Arnie jerked as he held out the net to him. “You scared me for a second.” Arnie leaned forward to net the Chinook.

He had to do it now. His heart was racing and blood was pounding in his ears. He gripped Arnie’s shoulders and shoved him overboard.

Arnie gasped as he resurfaced. “Hey, wait, what are you doing?”

His hands shook uncontrollably as he steered the boat away. “Sorry, Arnie. It’s your fault I had to do this. We had a deal. We were in this together. You shouldn’t have gone and made that threat.”

“I won’t say anything, I swear. Now throw me a life jacket.” Arnie swam toward the boat, his strokes labored and stiff from the frigid water of Puget Sound.

It was a good thing Arnie wasn’t thicker than a toothpick. He wouldn’t last long in these temperatures. Fifteen, twenty minutes tops. “You know, you’re right. We might be taking too much. Now that I have your share, I can back off so it looks like the company is doing better.”

“No, don’t do this, no!”

He didn’t look back. He wanted to remember Arnie alive.

His thoughts came back to the present. It hadn’t taken long to reach the University of Washington’s campus. He parked in the lot nearest PACCAR Hall, where according to the university’s website, the professor taught statistics for the evening MBA program. At nine-fifteen, students piled out of the classrooms and headed for their cars. He glanced at the printout of the professor’s picture he’d obtained from the web.

His eyes darted from person to person until there was no one left in the parking lot.

He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. If he didn’t get to the professor tonight, he’d have to do it in the morning before Jade met with him.

Just as he turned on the ignition to leave, he spotted a man coming out of the building with a woman. He held his breath and squinted. It was hard to see in the dusk. Was it… yes!

The professor stopped and talked to the woman by her minivan, then headed to a red sedan.

Pulling out after the professor, he was careful to keep two cars between them. He gripped the steering wheel to stop his hands from trembling. Fueled by adrenaline, his breathing and heart rate were doing double time.

When they took the exit off the freeway, by sheer luck he was right behind the red sedan. He stepped on the accelerator and passed the professor. The speedometer rose rapidly: forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five.

There’s my turn-around point.

He slammed on the brakes and fishtailed.

His car skidded to a stop and he took a deep breath.

With no time to spare, he turned around, stepped on the accelerator, and sped up to fifty on the wrong side of the road.

The red sedan closed in. The professor was fiddling with something on the dash.

Shit, look up, you son of a—

At the last moment, the professor looked back at the road, eyes wide in horror, and then jerked the sedan to the right.

His front quarter panel hit the back of the red sedan. He gripped the SUV’s steering wheel tight as it swerved to the right, then the left, then the right again. Finally, he got it under control.

In the rearview mirror, the professor’s car veered into the ditch and slammed into a power pole.

He wiped sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve and stomped on the gas. It didn’t matter whether the professor lived or died. It would take him a long time to recuperate from those injuries, if he recovered at all.

Jade was on her own.

IT SURPRISED JADE
that she’d left her parents’ house after dark. She’d barely made it on time with the cake, and she hadn’t meant to stay so late. She was beyond exhausted, but spending time with her parents had really cheered her up. Dad had helped himself to two pieces of cake, and she was sure he’d sneak one for breakfast before Mom got up.

She hadn’t realized that with her gone and Gran’s passing, Mom and Dad no longer sat in the formal dining room and made big Sunday night dinners. Well, that was going to stop. Jade looked forward to starting the Sunday night dinner tradition again, even if it meant being a guinea pig for her mother’s cooking.

Jade had eventually broken down and told her parents about the financial issues at Synergy. It was odd Gran hadn’t mentioned anything to either of them.
She must not have known.

Dad thought it was a good idea to get an objective opinion, and his support made her day. Stan’s constant objections to her ideas had been wearing her down. Tomorrow morning, she’d meet with Professor Murti. Jade hoped after the professor reviewed the data and looked at the trends, he would be able to answer her questions, or at least make recommendations that Stan couldn’t—or wouldn’t.

She grabbed her purse from the front seat, locked her condo for the night, and went straight to bed. Huge mistake after eating chocolate cake and drinking two glasses of wine. Even though she was exhausted, Jade couldn’t sleep. Something gnawed at her that she couldn’t put her finger on. She tossed and turned, trying not to wake her cat, Whiskers, sleeping next to her pillow. She couldn’t stop thinking about what her father had said.

“This is your company. You need to take the bull by the horns, like your grandmother would have, and take charge.”

But how?

Jade stared at the ceiling for a long time, her mind blank, not providing any answers.

What would my professors tell me to do if I asked them?

She thought back to her master’s program. Her first course had been on competitive strategy. It had been her favorite subject, and it had tied in to every other course she’d taken thereafter.
If you know the strategic direction of a company
,
you can make decisions that align with the strategy.
A single problem can have multiple solutions, but the right solutions are always the ones that align with the strategic direction of the company.

She remembered case studies about Walmart’s strategic decision to offer consumers products at the lowest prices. Every business decision was made to decrease costs.

Sounds like Stan’s strategy. The only problem is that shouldn’t be our strategy. We make low-volume, high-dollar avionics equipment. Quality and timeliness is what the industry calls for. What Synergy needs is a strategy, and from there, all other decisions will follow.

Jade bolted upright in bed.

How could I be so stupid?

Though the room was covered in darkness, the moon seemed to shine brighter. She was CEO of Synergy Technologies. She shouldn’t be worrying that she wasn’t running the day-to-day operations and feeling insignificant as a result. Bryce had that job, and the company was in good hands.

I should be creating a vision and setting the strategic direction for the company. I should be spending time identifying ways to make changes to move the company in a new direction.

Class discussions, case studies, research papers, and books she’d read flooded her memory.

I need to get a better understanding of each of the business areas and work with those teams to improve their processes and help them drive their business decisions based on the strategy. The biggest problem will be getting the managers on board.

After receiving a rather annoyed look from Whiskers for waking him up, Jade rubbed his furry chin until he purred in feline bliss.

Her spirits lifted. For the first time since becoming CEO, she had a purpose.

AT FIRST LIGHT,
Jade bounded out of bed. This morning, she’d see Professor Murti, then she’d start to strategize. Since he wouldn’t be in until nine, she had a leisurely breakfast, something she rarely had time for. She even set out a bowl of warm milk for Whiskers before heading to her car.

If the professor isn’t in when I get there, I’ll walk the campus on this beautiful sunny day. The one nice thing about being CEO, no one will question my schedule. Well, no one but Bryce.

The memory of Bryce’s hands kneading her sore muscles and the feel of his warm breath on her exposed neck sent a tingling sensation from her head to her toes. His eyes had lingered on her lips. She was ninety-nine percent sure he’d wanted to bridge the distance between them, but he hadn’t made a move. She wanted to feel his hands on her again. No, she
needed
to feel his hands on her again.
So how to make it happen?

Jade forgot why she was standing by her car. Bryce always had a way of hijacking her thoughts. She opened the door to grab the laptop. It wasn’t there. She glanced on the floor, no sign of it. She didn’t remember putting it in the trunk, but it would have been the smart thing to do. Taking her key fob, she popped open the trunk. No laptop.

What did I do with it? Did I leave it at Mom and Dad’s? No, my hands were full with the cake and Dad’s present.

She took a slow breath and brought back the image of the laptop. Yup, she’d put it in the front seat. Did she lock her door when she ran into the bakery? Nope.

It’s gone.

Jade’s stomach churned as she got in her car, called Zack, and waited for him to pick up. “Hey, Zach I have some bad news. I left my car unlocked when I ran into the bakery and—”

“The laptop was stolen.” His voice was laced with irritation.

“Yeah. Should I call the police?”

“Yes, for insurance reasons. It’s a good thing I encrypted the data. Tell me you still have the password.”

“I do.”

“Good. No one will get the data without it.”

“I feel so stupid. Are you sure our financial information is safe?”

“As safe as it could possibly be under the circumstances. It was a strong password and the software is designed to freeze up after five failed login attempts. It would be hard to brute-force attack it to crack the password. Most people will just reformat the hard drive and start over.”